Mental approach can cut prejudice

Mental simulation can help reduce prejudice and discrimination by promoting tolerance among different social groups, according to psychologists.

Research of mental simulation has found a long tradition of it achieving changes in all sorts of behaviour, such as in athletes who have boosted performances by imagining themselves running faster.

It is also said to be responsible for helping students gain better results in the classroom, by imagining themselves working harder and for longer when they study.

According to psychologists at the University of Kent, mental simulation can also be adopted for use in organisations to promote greater tolerance for social diversity.

In a paper published by Cur-rent Directions in Psychological Science, experts describe how future policy could include in-sights from mental simulation research to develop ways of tackling social problems.

One of the paper’s authors, Richard Crisp, said: “The cognitive and neural systems used in remembering and imagining are surprisingly similar, which explains why repeatedly imagining oneself carrying out a certain behaviour can have a similar effect to actually carrying out that behaviour.

“This means that just as actual contact between social groups has been shown to promote tolerance, so too might mental exercises that emulate these successful interactions.”